Comic Picks By The Glick

Why yes, this collection did come out over a month ago.  Did it take me that long to buy it?  Nope, it’s been sitting on my dresser for roughly that long.  I wouldn’t say that’s because of any apathy that the series has fostered in me, that’s what happened to Ai Yazawa’s “Nana.”  No, in the case of “Morning Glories,” it’s becoming increasingly apparent that if you want to get the most out of the latest volume, you’re going to have to go back and read all of the ones that came before.  Amazon tells me that vol. 7 comes out in April, so this is something I’ll have to do when it arrives.  As for vol. 6 in the here and now, it soldiers on and manages to be quite readable even if everything is weighed down by what has come before.

The five issues collected here are all one-shots focusing on a specific member of the cast.  We start off with Irina, the crazy and violent instigator of the key events from the last few volumes, and learn how she got to be so crazy and violent in the first place.  Hunter tries to make sense of his dream vision and joins the school’s AV club.  Vanessa gets to use time travel to make an apparently futile gesture.  Hisao… well, his story is complicated and spoilery as there’s a double-reverse plot twist involved there.  Also, a bit of deus ex machina-ism at the end which is shared by the flashback involving Jade’s mother and her death as well.

Ike doesn’t get an issue, but he does get all the best lines.  As always.

On one hand, all of the above stories are fairly self-contained and interesting in their own right.  Hunter’s is the most fun as his cluelessness and fanboyism -- “So you guys don’t really like ‘Dark City?’” is endearing as is the way he’s figuratively trolled by the narrative at its end.  Irina’s does come off as somewhat overwrought as her mother comes off as more of a familiar plot device than a character in her own right.  The others more or less serve to further develop their respective characters, set up future stories and occasionally offer clarifications on previous ones.

That last bit is somewhat nebulous as it’ll test your memory of the events of previous volumes.  I had to go back and find out who Danielle Clarkson was before I realized the significance of her appearance in Irina’s story.  There’s probably many more instances like that waiting to be found here, yet they’re going to have to wait until the inevitable re-read before they make themselves known.  As such, the overall narrative here takes a breather as the cast deals with the deaths and other mystical happenings that have been piling up recently.  We get a new “core group” at the  end which will hopefully streamline things a bit as the story heads into its back half.

Even so, I’ve since come to realize that “Morning Glories” really has two fathers as far as its inspiration is concerned.  “Lost” is the obvious one with its sci-fi fantasy leanings, deeply entrenched mythology and a narrative that was more character than plot-driven.  The other is Naoki Urasawa’s “20th Century Boys.”  Not only is it a closer relative due to the fact that they share the same medium, but that story also had plenty of mysteries that were set up and resolved over its course with lots of little touches and callbacks that were revealed once you read it all at once.  I should also mention that I took in seasons one through five of “Lost” in binge-watching sessions, which helped to mitigate a lot of its inconsistencies and quality issues.  Even when an episode didn’t quite click, there was another one ready to be taken in that would likely come off better.

There’s more to this too.  While I’ve talked about how well “20th Century Boys” holds together as a whole, I have no desire to watch “Lost” again.  I enjoyed it well enough watching it through once, but knowing what I know now about how it all comes together and that the one key plot thread I wanted to see resolved -- yes, they really did forget about Walt -- was left up in the air doesn’t appeal to me in the slightest.  Also, the fifteen-minute epilogue they made as a bonus to those who bought the box set was an exquisite example of how to troll one’s fanbase.  Yes, they answered a lot of the little questions people had about the show’s mythology, but the answers were so inconsequential that you really had to wonder if it would’ve been so much trouble to address them in the course of the series itself.

At this point, I feel that “Morning Glories” could go either way.  On one hand, the series does seem to draw heavily from “Lost’s” approach, as the stories here also mirrored the show’s use of flashbacks to flesh out its cast in a given episode.  On the other, this is the vision of one writer who writes every issue and doesn’t have to contend with things like having an actor age out of a role, not be available when they’re needed, or decide to leave the show for personal reasons.  I think it could still go either way at this point, and it’s a credit to Spencer, and artist Joe Eisma -- who has really gotten a lot better since the start of the series -- that I’m still willing to give it the benefit of the doubt.  We’ll see if that still holds true in April.